Cancer is a scary word -- pancreatic cancer is beyond scary. It has one of the highest mortality rates of all cancers. Symptoms of the disease usually are hard to recognize and most patients are diagnosed in the advanced stages.

Anytime I read about a new drug that can increase the survival of this deadly disease I get excited. An early online publication of the Journal of Clinical Oncology states that the addition to the targeted agent Tarceva (erlotinib) to Gemzar (gemcitabine) can improve survival in patients diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.

The Phase III clinical trial included 569 patients who were either treated with Tarceva plus Gemzar or Gemzar plus placebo. At one year the survival of those treated with the drug combination reached 23 percent. Gemzar alone had a 17 percent survival rate at one year. The study also said that more patients treated with the combination of Tarceva/Gemzar achieved stabilization of their disease.

I am hoping that sooner, rather than later this disease will not be beyond scary and will be something that can be treated, controlled and one day cured.

A new study shows certain genes may make some lung cancer patients more sensitive to chemotherapy. This is a good thing -- increased sensitivity in this case means lower doses of drug therapy work as good or better than higher doses.

Researchers looked at more than 21,000 genes in cells common to non-small-cell lung cancer, the most common type of the disease. Of these genes, 87 came up with heightened sensitivity to the chemotherapy drug Taxol. To be exact, the genes were 1,000 times more sensitive when exposed to the drug for 48 hours.

Chemotherapy is a very blunt instrument, says one researcher. Locating genes that make chemotherapy drugs more potent at lower doses is a critical step toward tailoring treatment and minimizing side effects for patients.

Two other drugs -- Navelbine and Gemzar -- were tested on six of the Taxol-sensitive genes. The genes did not respond to these drugs.

Researchers in Spain conducted a Phase III clinical trial called GEICAM. They wanted to compare different chemotherapy regimes in women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. The trial included 252 women who had already been treated with anthracyclines and taxanes and experienced a recurrence.

One group of women was treated with Gemzar (gemcitabine) and Navelbine (vinorelbine), the other group was treated with Navelbine alone. The results were published in Lancet Oncology that states the combination of the two drugs improves progression free survival. It was also mentioned that this combination however did not improve overall survival.

When cancer recurs following treatment with anthracyclines and taxanes, some of the strongest chemotherapies for breast cancer, patients have limited treatment options. Researchers continue to search for different chemotherapy combinations that are effective against recurrent breast cancer.

The researchers concluded that anticancer responses were 36 percent for patients treated with Gemzar/Navelbine and 26 percent for patients treated with Navelbine alone.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. So any bit of progress on the pancreatic cancer front is a big deal. And researchers are happy to report they've found a chemotherapy drug that can help patients who have received surgery prevent a return of the disease for a longer period of time.

In a German study, participants who received Gemzar, or gemcitabine, lived an average of 13.4 months without their cancers coming back. Participants who did not receive the drug lived without the disease for 6.9 months. While the findings of this study may seem modest, they really are quite encouraging because pancreatic cancer is such a rapid killer, and patients with this disease have the worst chances of recovery.

This study, published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, brings hope for the mere 20 percent of pancreatic cancer patients who are candidates for surgery. While surgery is the best hope for a cure, the disease still returns in the majority of cases -- so Gemzar is surely worth a shot.

It should be noted that some study authors report financial ties to Gemzar drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co. Researchers, however, report the firm had no influence in design or data interpretation.

A clinical trial was conducted to see if the addition of Gemzar (gemcitabine) to Paraplatin (carboplatin) would improve progression free survival in women with ovarian cancer who had been treated and have since had a recurrence of their disease.

The trial included 356 patients who have received prior chemotherapy. The women in study had a cancer recurrence at least six months following initial chemotherapy. They separated the women into two groups. One group was treated with Gemzar and carbolplatin, the other group of patients only received carboplatin.

A complete disappearance of detectable cancer occurred in over 14 percent of the patients who were treated with Gemzar and carboplatin, compared with only a little over 6 percent for those treated with just carboplatin.

The researches from Europe, Canada, and the United States agree that the results indicate the superiority of the addition of Gemzar to carboplatin for the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer that has recurred.

Reuters has just issued an update on Eli Lilly's announcement that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA, approved the use of Gemzar in the treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer, questioning why the company omitted information that the FDA approval goes against the advice of an FDA advisory panel earlier this year that strongly recommended against approval of the drug for this use.

The FDA approved use of Gemzar in combination with carboplatin, in chemotherapy treatment for women with advanced ovarian cancer that has relapsed at least six months after initial therapy. The reason the FDA advisory panel voted against the approval of the use of Gemzar in combination with carboplatin, were due to questions raised about Lilly's trial data and the way the company conducted the 356-person clinical study. The panel was concerned that patients in the late-stage clinical trial failed to survive longer than those taking carboplatin alone. The FDA went ahead and approved it after the drug company provided additional information.

What needs to be made clear is that Gemzar does not seem to prolong the life of women with recurrent ovarian cancer, and the drug company is only stating that Gemzar provides longer progression-free survival than patients taking carboplatin alone. Progression-free survival measures the time before the disease recurs or worsens.

According to Reuters, when a spokesperson for Lilly was asked why they did not mention in its release that the FDA advisory panel had voted against the approval of Gemzar, or the drug's failure to prolong life, he said, "I'm not sure that needed to be the focus."

Eli Lilly and Company has announced that the United States Food and Drug Administration, FDA, has approved gemcitabine HCl, known as Gemzar, in chemotherapy cancer treatments for women facing recurrent ovarian cancer. Gemzar is only approved for the treatment of ovarian cancer when used in combination with carboplatin, another chemotherapy drug currently used to treat women with advanced and recurrent ovarian cancer.

Gemzar is already approved as a cancer drug in the treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer and metastatic breast cancer. Clinical studies reviewed by the FDA showed that patients treated with a combination of Gemzar and carboplatin experienced a significant improvement in survival and response rates compared to carboplatin alone.

"Ovarian cancer is marked by one of the highest recurrence rates of all women's cancers," states Dr. Robert Ozols, of the Fox Chase Cancer Center. "The Gemzar combination can help us aggressively address this recurrent disease with increased clinical efficacy and generally manageable side effects."

For more information about the chemotherapy drug Gemzar, visit Eli Lilly's Gemzar website.